Dell's attention to detail is evident in the 6300's physical design. Able to live on the floor, a shelf or a rack, its short (7U, or 12.25-inch) rack height is a plus if you're trying to pack high-density power into a relatively small space. Not only did I really like the physical design--including the three separate load-balancing power supplies and screwless I/O card access and tie-downs--but I appreciated the server's well-tooled firmware and software. The 6300 includes an Automatic Server Recovery feature, which automates restart from Windows NT's blue screen of death, as well as server-management tools that enable versatile problem notification.

High Performance I tested a prerelease PowerEdge 6300 in our Chatham County, Ga., lab shortly before Intel Corp.'s announcement of the Xeon processor, and I was quite impressed. I used Dell's 32-bit RAID card, since the 64-bit version wasn't yet available. Using Coffee Computing Corp.'s FileMetric performance-testing tool, I ran a suite of tests that compared this server's Windows NT performance to that of several Pentium Pro servers. The 6300 sliced them all to pieces. Although the 6300's write throughput (on average) was only 4 percent better than the group, its read performance was extraordinary, with throughput that was three times faster than the best of the Pentium Pros.

Although the 6300's performance was noteworthy, its fault-tolerance features were even more impressive. With ECC (error-correcting code) RAM, hot-plug hard drives, two integrated Ultra-2 LVD (Low Voltage Differential) SCSI controllers and hot-plug-ready PCI slots (software support won't be available until Windows NT 5.0 is released), the 6300 will provide you with great uptime and speed.

I liked that the server ships standard with three hot-swappable power supplies but wished that each power supply were beefy enough to run the entire server. The 6300 must have two of the three power supplies running; fortunately, you'll know quickly about a power supply going bad, as the server's trouble-reporting features are excellent. However, don't rely on the audible alarm via the built-in speaker--I used this feature in the lab, and it was as loud as bread rising.

Slices, Dices and Even Chops Even if it won't cut through a tomato right after a tin can, the 6300's management capabilities are considerable. The server comes with a special edition of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s OpenView Network Node Manager (NNM) for Windows, which can make life a lot easier with its proactive troubleshooting options. I liked that in addition to SNMP traps, you can configure different events to carry out different tasks, such as launch an application or page someone.

In the lab, I configured NNM to send a broadcast message to the network when a power supply failed, as well as to flash a trouble LED in the front, which was more noticeable than the "audible" alarm. I also set the server to reboot automatically at an operating system hang. I couldn't quite get the software still won't change backup tapes for you.

Dell's remote-management card wasn't available for our testing, but it is designed to allow remote control and server management during lockup, boot-time and GUI- or character-based run-time.

Jonathan Feldman is technical systems manager for the Chatham County government in Savannah, Ga. He can be reached at jfeldman@nwc.com.